


Everything I Never Knew

by Deejaymil



Series: His Dark Mind [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Crossover, Daemons, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:12:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5102483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron Hotchner isn't very good at knowing what he wants. He never has been, even when he was seventeen with a brother that outshone him and a dæmon that just wouldn't settle.</p>
<p>Years later, Spencer Reid walks into the BAU with a head full of facts and a dæmon that isn't afraid to tell them exactly what's on his mind. Suddenly, Hotch knows exactly what he wants but with no idea how to get it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything I Never Knew

**Author's Note:**

> For those who are unfamiliar with the His Dark Materials universe, this is basically all you need to know (taken from the wiki)
> 
> **"A dæmon /ˈdiːmən/ is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily, almost instantaneously, to become any creature, real or imaginary. During their adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons and their humans are almost always of different genders."**

Aaron Hotchner had once sat on the sidelines at his cousin’s birthday party because he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to play party games with one group of excited children or tag with another. Instead, he’d moodily slouched against the wall of his uncle’s house while his dæmon snuffled around his legs in the form a badger, huffing at anyone who came too close.

Grandmamma had wandered over to him, clicking her tongue at his flushed face and running a cool hand over his forehead to wipe a lock of wayward hair back from dark eyes. “You’re not very good at knowing what you want,” she’d commented with a sharp gleam in her eyes, and Aaron had shrugged.

He never really outgrew that.

 

* * *

 

“Your dæmon still hasn’t settled.” The school psychologist eyed him over narrow glasses, a slight look of distaste around her mouth. Aaron fought the urge to kick her under the table as she carefully avoided looking at Halaimon. Hal was flickering at a rapid pace through a startling variety of animals, each displaying Aaron’s irate mood. Her dæmon, a barred owl, clucked his beak a few times and rustled heavy feathers in obvious disapproval.

At seventeen, Hal should have settled years ago. But Aaron rarely did what was expected of him; why would his dæmon would be any different?

“It says here your brother’s dæmon settled two years ago, and he’s younger than you.” There was that desire to kick her again as she rattled off the bane of his life. _Why can’t you be more like your brother? Why are you so serious, why are you so cold? You’re a disappointment, Aaron._

“I’m not my brother,” he muttered to the glossy surface of her desk. Hal shifted into a crow and made a harsh noise of agreement.

 

* * *

 

Aaron had left home as soon as he was able and never looked back, which was why Sean on his doorstep in the middle of the night when he had finals the next day was a surprise, and not a welcome one.

“Why are you here?” Aaron asked, moving aside with a raised eyebrow to let his brother in, his dæmon gambolling playfully around his ankles.

“What? Can’t I visit my big brother without there being some dark reason?” Sean said with a snort, stopping dead at the sight of Hal sprawled near Aaron’s bed. “Woah, she settled big.”

Aaron looked from Sean’s slim, cheerful dæmon to his own watching the proceedings with cold eyes and shrugged. “She’s some sort of shepherd dog. They get big.” Sean knew him better than to believe that he didn’t know exactly what his dæmon was, but he also knew better than to pry.

“Can I stay here for a while?” he said later that night after a few beers, and Aaron warily agreed, even as Hal bared long fangs at the otter in a silent command for them to keep their distance.

 

* * *

 

“What’s your dæmon?” asked the FBI recruiter on the first day of Aaron’s training, his pen poised over the intake paperwork. Aaron thought of the work he’d soon be doing, dangerous and thrilling and for the first time something he wanted more than _anything_.

“She’s a wolf,” he told the man quietly. Hal rumbled in agreement.

**Halaimon: grey wolf,** the form said in clear print for everyone to see.

“What does it matter what they call me anyway?” Hal asked later that night. Aaron didn’t answer.

When the other trainees introduced themselves to him, he told them to call him Hotch. There was a lot of power in names, even if Hal didn’t see it. Aaron had a dog dæmon, and everyone compared him to his brother.

Hotch had a wolf dæmon, and no one questioned him.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t sure what to make of the new team member Gideon had insisted on. The kid was all gangly limbs and wide eyes with his ridiculous hair flopping into his eyes and guaranteeing he’d never be able to get off a clear shot—assuming he ever qualified for a weapon, anyway.

“I dunno, Hotch,” Morgan said out of the corner of his mouth, watching Gideon talking to the kid in his office. “He looks like he’s going to get himself killed in the field.” His dæmon, a boxer dog with a powerful, muscular body, leaned against his leg and rumbled deep in her throat with unspoken agreement. Hotch let one hand fall onto Hal’s rough head, an easy feat considering his dæmon’s height, and made a non-committal noise.

“Give him a chance,” he suggested. “He might surprise us all.”

Gideon emerged from his office with his hawk dæmon perched on his shoulder and a wide grin on his face, the cocky one that Hotch always hated. “I’d like to introduce you all to Dr. Spencer Reid,” he announced, shoving the man forward even as he tried to hang back.

“Where’s his dæmon?” Hal said in a voice low enough that only Hotch could hear. There was no animal perched on the man’s cardigan or hanging out of a pocket, the ground around his feet clear. Hotch frowned, and made a mental note to ask him if he had an insect dæmon and a proper safety case for the creature to travel in.

In the end, that turned out to be the least mysterious thing about Spencer Reid.

 

* * *

 

It was their first case with the new kid, and Hotch felt a small tinge of apprehension at letting the strange and somewhat off-putting Dr. Reid out into the field. It was a feeling that wasn’t changed in any way when a Volvo that looked like it had seen more years than Hotch had pulled up next to him at the airfield and the doctor himself stepped out.

“Agent Hotchner,” Dr. Reid greeted him nervously, nodding his head as he got out the car. “Halaimon,” he added, repeating the gesture towards the large dæmon at Hotch’s side. Hotch froze. It was an unspoken rule that people didn’t talk to other people’s dæmons unless given explicit permission. For his newest colleague have done so in such a casual manner was startling, to say the least.

A flash of brown by the younger man’s feet drew his attention away from the social misstep. A creature darted out of the car and vanished into the shrubbery at the side of the parking lot before Hotch could even get a clear view. “What was that?” he asked, forgetting his irritation, Hal twitching with surprise.

Dr. Reid shrugged indifferently, leaning into his car to get his go-bag and nudging the door shut with his hip. “Aureilo. He’ll be back before we board. Have you got the case notes?”

He was right. Hotch had barely settled into his chair on the jet when the creature reappeared, bouncing easily up the steps and eyeing the cabin with her head tilted to one side. Hotch noted that she was small. Then he noted how pretty she was. He felt surprise for neither of these things.

“She’s a rabbit,” Morgan commented, lowering the casefile and grinning at the lanky creature. “Suits you, Pretty Boy.”

Reid gave Morgan a strange look at the nickname, even as his dæmon shook her fur out angrily and stood upright on her hind-legs. “I am most certainly not,” the dæmon hissed in what was unmistakably a masculine voice. “I’m very _clearly_ a European Hare, and most _assuredly_ not a she.”

Reid kept calmly reading through his file as everyone looked from him to his dæmon, his eyes never leaving the page.

 

* * *

 

Reid didn’t talk very often but Aureilo did, when he bothered to be present anyway. Anytime he wasn’t, Reid would wander around with an oddly vacant gaze as though half his mind was somewhere else. He was still brilliant though, even more so when he had his dæmon to compliment his reservations, and at some point they stopped caring that there was no guarantee whether a question aimed at Reid would be answered by him or by his dæmon.

Hotch wasn’t sure when he’d started to respect the man in his own right, but it may have been around the point that Reid had shot a man in the forehead to save both their lives without Hotch even having to say a word.

 

* * *

 

Hotch leapt out of the car with his heart hammering in his throat. Hal charged ahead, tasting the air. He was only half aware of the rest of the team spreading out, Morgan and Prentiss racing for the barn with their dæmons beside them.

“This way,” Hal barked, turning on a dime and bounding towards the cornfield. Hotch followed her, his hand on his weapon and adrenaline charging through his veins. He’d sent Reid and JJ out here. If something had happened to them, it was his fault.

He caught up to his dæmon staring down at the trodden stalks and earth with wide, worried eyes. “Someone was dragged,” Gideon said softly, his hawk wheeling high above with her keen eyes searching for their missing colleagues.

“Spencer,” breathed Hal, her nostrils flaring over a dark splatter of blood on the ground and voice light with an emotion he’d never heard her express before. “That bastard has taken Spencer and Aureilo.”

She was scared.

So was he.

 

* * *

 

They were spread out around Hankel’s house desperately searching for anything that could possibly lead them to their missing friend when Hal snuffed the air and gave a wild, startling bark. Their weapons were out in seconds, but it wasn’t fear that slammed into Hotch like a freight train when his dæmon trotted over to the door and nuzzled the creature that had limped in.

“Aureilo,” he said, relief crashing through him. If the hare was here, Reid was too. The nightmare was over.

But the dæmon staggered further into the room, his soft fur mattered with foamy sweat and leaving a damp trail of blood from damaged paws. “I tried to chase the car,” he slurred, slumping onto his side and laying horribly, terribly still, the only sign of life in the laboured rise and fall of his sides. Hotch couldn’t think for the crushing dread that followed those words, his head whirling with the implications. That bastard had taken Reid and not his dæmon. He’d _severed_ them. He’d killed them.

They’d die.

_Deaddeaddead,_ chanted a jeering voice in his head, the bitter first-hand knowledge of what happened to a person separated from his dæmon the subject of many tragic cases previously. No one else in the room moved, humans and dæmons all frozen in the grief of the moment, everyone expecting the hare to vanish into a shower of gold dust at any second.

They hadn’t said goodbye.

Hal whined deeply and curled her huge body protectively around the fragile form, nosing it gently with her tongue caressing the bloodied paws. She raised her head and bared white fangs at the inhabitants of the room. “They’re not dead yet!” she snarled, turning her muzzle toward Hotch. “You can still find him! Move!”

 

* * *

 

He was standing next to the body of the bastard that had taken him and looking at them with an expression that belonged on a much older man, as though he wasn’t quite sure where he was or what was happening anymore. Hotch wanted nothing more than to grab him and shake that vacancy out of his expression; to stop him from looking so much like someone severed from reality.

Aureilo lay immobile in Hotch’s car, curled up deeply asleep in the backseat, still destroyed from his desperate attempts to get to Reid before the unsub had taken him. And Hotch didn’t dare pick the light body up and carry him out here to this nightmarish place, even if the end result was placing him in Reid’s arms.

Reid staggered towards him, shaking and pale. “I knew you’d understand,” he gasped, collapsing against his chest. Hotch drew his arms around him and squeezed tightly, letting out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.

He was alive. He was talking. God only knew how, but he was _okay_.

Hal squeezed in beside them and pushed her heavy head against Reid’s leg, whining uncharacteristically needily in her demand for attention. Reid hesitated for a moment, his eyes flickering up to Hotch almost as though to ask for permission, before dropping a trembling hand down to run gently down the canine’s fur. Hotch shivered but didn’t say anything.

Somehow, nothing about Spencer Reid surprised him anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited August, 2017.**

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Contemplating Madness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6003337) by [Deejaymil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil)




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